Root at Your Own Risk? Fans Are Left Largely Unprotected

At the Tokyo Dome, where the Red Sox opened against the Athletics in March, protective screens extend to the outfield.Credit
David Guttenfelder/Associated Press

Alarms went off last season. A minor league first-base coach, Mike Coolbaugh, was killed by a foul ball. Cardinals outfielder Juan Encarnación may never play again after having been struck in his left eye with a foul ball while in the on-deck circle. Some baseball people heard those alarms. First- and third-base coaches must wear helmets now, and at Busch Stadium in St. Louis the screen behind home plate now extends from dugout to dugout, although the on-deck circles there remain unprotected.

But in the big picture, baseball is ignoring those alarms — the big picture that includes all those fans in unprotected seats near the dugouts and the foul lines where line-drive foul balls can be lethal projectiles.

Baseball is hiding behind the 145-word “warning” on the back of every ticket that reads, in part, “The bearer of the Ticket assumes all risk and danger incidental to the sport of baseball ... including specifically (but not exclusively) the danger of being injured by thrown bats, fragments thereof, and thrown or batted balls.” In other words, if you are injured by a ball or a bat, you can’t sue the teams, the players or Major League Baseball (or minor league baseball, for that matter).

You can go to the first-aid room or to a hospital, but you can’t sue. And you cannot know how many fans need first aid from batted or thrown balls. The commissioner’s office has no central file on injured fans.

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As line-drive foul balls keep whistling into those unprotected seats, baseball people hold their breath and hold on to this statistic: There has been only one death as a result of a batted ball in major league history. In 1970, a 14-year-old boy died after being hit in the head by a foul ball off the bat of Dodgers outfielder Manny Mota in Los Angeles.

But according to the coming book “Death at the Ballpark,” co-written by Robert M. Gorman, a librarian at Winthrop University in Rock Hill, S.C., and David Weeks, more than 75 deaths have been caused by foul balls from the major leagues to the sandlots. So the danger exists, and with box seats in the new stadiums closer to the field, the danger increases.

Japan has the solution. When the Red Sox opened the season there, maybe you noticed that protective screens rose along the front-row boxes all the way to the outfield walls.

When Commissioner Bud Selig was asked, in a telephone interview from his Milwaukee office, if similar protective screens had ever been discussed by major league owners, he said the sentiment over the years was that the fans’ view of the game would be obstructed. Yet nobody seems to object to the view from behind the screen and netting behind home plate. Many fans prefer to sit there. Families of players and team personnel are usually placed there.

In a sampling of about a dozen fans in the unprotected areas and under the screen behind home plate at Yankee Stadium and Shea Stadium last week, the breakdown was about half for the status quo and half for more screening or netting.

“I got hit by a baseball right in the head in ’03, but I still think it would take away from the game to have the screens up,” said Paul Bastkowski of Salem, N.Y., sitting behind first base at Yankee Stadium with his 9-year-old daughter. “You’ve got to be alert, and you have to understand the risk.”

At Shea Stadium, Alan Salen of Oceanside, N.Y., sitting behind third base with his 7-year-old son, said that being hit by a foul ball was “always a fear.”

“That’s why I make sure I’m sitting to his right,” he said, referring to his son. “You want to be kid friendly, and I can’t think of any other way to do it except putting the net up.”

Hardly anybody protested when the N.H.L. put up netting around the goal areas at each rink in 2002, after 13-year-old Brittanie Cecil became the first fan killed by a puck in the league’s history. She was struck in the head by a deflected puck during a game in Columbus, Ohio, and died two days later.

At both New York baseball stadiums, players and coaches in the dugout are protected by screens, installed after Don Zimmer, then a Yankee coach, was struck on the side of his face by a foul ball during a 1999 playoff game against Texas.

Rushed to the trainer’s room in the Yankee clubhouse, Zimmer was being comforted when, as he recalled in his book, “Zim,” he heard the principal owner, George Steinbrenner, order a shield for the dugout, saying, “We can’t have guys getting hurt like this.” The next day Zimmer wore an Army helmet in the dugout as Joe Torre’s bench coach. But there is still no shield for all those “guys” sitting behind the dugouts.

At next month’s owners meeting, Selig promised to “bring it up and talk about it,” meaning additional screens or netting for the fans. But do not merely talk about it. Do something about it. Baseball does not need another black eye. Or worse, a black hearse.

Joshua Robinson contributed reporting.

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